Analysis: no end in sight for Pakistan's struggle against the Taliban

Pakistan's government and army are in a state of denial about the extent of the Taliban's threat, despite nearly a dozen suicide attacks in as many days.

Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani Photo: PA

By Ahmed Rashid

5:15PM BST 17 Oct 2009

Pakistan's militants are intent on nothing less than toppling the government, assassinating the ruling establishment, imposing an Islamic state and getting hold of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

The attacks in advance of the army's ground offensive in South Waziristan were widespread, taking place in three of the country's four provinces and involving not just Taliban tribesmen from the Pashtun ethnic group, but extremist Punjabi factions who were until recently trained by the Interservices Intelligence (ISI) to fight India in Kashmir.

Several of the militants killed had direct connections to the army or the ISI. "Dr Usman", the leader of the group that attacked the army headquarters in Rawalpindi last weekend and held 42 hostages for 22 hours inside the compound, was a member of the army's medical corps.

That attack and three subsequent co-ordinated strikes in Lahore on Thursday on police training compounds and an intelligence office also appeared to be inside jobs, as the terrorists knew the lay out and security arrangements of all the complexes. The intelligence building and one police compound had been attacked by militants in 2008 and 2009 and since then their security arrangements had been improved, but still the attackers knew how to bypass security.

While the army is unwilling to admit what many Pakistanis now believe - that there is penetration by extremist sympathisers within its ranks - the government also refuses to admit that the largest province of Punjab has become the major new recruiting ground for militants.

Hafez Saeed, the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba whose militants carried out the massacre in Mumbai India last year, was wanted by India and Interpol and yet has been freed twice from jail in Punjab on account of lack of evidence.

The brother of the national opposition leader Nawaz Sharif who governs Punjab has rebuffed requests by the Americans, the British, India and the federal government to tackle extremists in the poverty-stricken south of the state where they are strongest.

Even though it has launched a major ground offensive in South Waziristan, the federal government run by President Asif Zardari is also in a state of denial about the threat now posed by a wide range of groups allied to the Taliban.

More worrisome are the worsening relations between the army and the government. Last week the army chief General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani blasted the government for agreeing to a $7.5 billion (£4.6 billion) five-year aid package from the US, furious that it had agreed to conditions which dared to insist on civilian control of the army, democratic rule and continuity in the fight against extremism.

The army, with its deep tentacles in the Pakistani media and opposition parties, whipped up a storm of public opinion against the deal, with some accusing the government of treason.

Neither the army nor the politicians seemed to consider that the country is virtually bankrupt and barely subsisting on International Monetary Fund loans. Pakistan has been holding out a begging bowl for the past year, while factories, farms and schools are shutting down because of a chronic shortage of electric power, which is off in major cities for up to 10 hours a day.

Meanwhile as the policy review over Afghanistan and Pakistan continues in the White House, both the army and government are being directly accused by US officials of continuing to harbour the Afghan Taliban leadership and allowing them to pump in recruits, logistics and other supplies into Afghanistan.

As long as British and Canadian troops in Helmand and Kandahar were facing the impact and effects of the Taliban's safe sanctuaries in Pakistan's Balochistan province, the former Bush administration was quiet. But now that there are over 10,000 US marines in Helmand and Kandahar who are taking casualties, the Obama administration has made the sanctuary threat a major issue in its relations with Pakistan.

Moreover other Afghan Taliban commanders such as Jalaluddin Haqqani based in Pakistan's tribal badlands in the north are also providing recruits and logistics to their fighters in north-eastern Afghanistan, where the US army recently lost eight soldiers in a single battle.

US relations with Pakistan's military remain fraught - everyone knows that it is still the army and not the civilian government that calls the shots - when it comes to policy towards India and Afghanistan.

International concern is mounting because these audacious attacks by militants which penetrated the heavily secured army HQ in Rawalpindi, could well mean that in the future militants could try the same tactics to attack one of the sites that holds nuclear weapons. So far that is considered unlikely as nobody knows where the weapons are held, various parts of the nuclear bombs are kept in separate locations and the sites are guarded by three army divisions.

The only optimism emanating from Islamabad is over the offensive in South Waziristan where the leadership of the Pakistani Taliban is holed up.

The key is to bring the US, Pakistan's army and its civilian government on to one page with a common agenda to resist extremism.